The Progressive Era, marked by a desire for economic, political, and social reform, ended for most Americans with the ugly reality and devastation of World War I. Yet for Army Air Service officers, the carnage and waste witnessed on the western front only served to spark a new progressive movement--to reform war by relying on destructive technology as the instrument of change. In Beneficial Bombing Mark Clodfelter describes how American airmen, horrified by World War I's trench warfare, turned to the progressive ideas of efficiency and economy in an effort to reform war itself, with the heavy b.

Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Source Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Genesis in the Great War; 2. Progressive Prophecy; 3. From Prophecy to Plan; 4. Breaching Fortress Europe, 1942-43; 5. Bludgeoning with Bombs; 6. Fire from the Sky; 7. Progressive Legacies; Notes; Bibliography; Index.